Related papers: Going higher in the First-order Quantifier Alterna…
Polynomial closure is a standard operator which is applied to a class of regular languages. In the paper, we investigate three restrictions called left (LPol), right (RPol) and mixed polynomial closure (MPol). The first two were known while…
We show that the first-order logical theory of the binary overlap-free words (and, more generally, the ${\alpha}$-free words for rational ${\alpha}$, $2 < {\alpha} \leq 7/3$), is decidable. As a consequence, many results previously obtained…
We investigate the following problem: given a sample of classified strings, find a first-order sentence of minimal quantifier rank that is consistent with the sample. We represent strings as successor string structures, that is, finite…
Over finite words, languages of dot-depth one are expressively complete for alternation-free first-order logic. This fragment is also known as the Boolean closure of existential first-order logic. Here, the atomic formulas comprise order,…
We introduce a flexible class of well-quasi-orderings (WQOs) on words that generalizes the ordering of (not necessarily contiguous) subwords. Each such WQO induces a class of piecewise testable languages (PTLs) as Boolean combinations of…
Given a class C of word languages, the C-separation problem asks for an algorithm that, given as input two regular languages, decides whether there exists a third language in C containing the first language, while being disjoint from the…
We consider grammar-restricted exact learning of formulas and terms in finite variable logics. We propose a novel and versatile automata-theoretic technique for solving such problems. We first show results for learning formulas that…
We introduce the finite-horizon first-order rank profile of a language $L \subseteq \Sigma^*$: the least quantifier rank needed by an $\mathrm{FO}[<]$ sentence to classify membership in $L$ correctly on all words of length at most $n$. The…
First-order logic is the basis for many knowledge representation formalisms and methods. Providing technological support for learning to write first-order formulas for natural language specifications requires methods to test formulas for…
We show that the decidability of the first-order theory of the language that combines Boolean algebras of sets of uninterpreted elements with Presburger arithmetic operations. We thereby disprove a recent conjecture that this theory is…
We study the question of whether a given regular language of finite trees can be defined in first-order logic. We develop an algebraic approach to address this question and we use it to derive several necessary and sufficient conditions for…
We study the expressive power of fragments of inclusion and independence logic defined either by restricting the number of universal quantifiers or the arity of inclusion and independence atoms in formulas. Assuming the so-called lax…
We study a natural hierarchy in first-order logic, namely the quantifier structure hierarchy, which gives a systematic classification of first-order formulas based on structural quantifier resource. We define a variant of…
For every fixed class of regular languages, there is a natural hierarchy of increasingly more general problems: Firstly, the membership problem asks whether a given language belongs to the fixed class of languages. Secondly, the separation…
Automatic structures are first-order structures whose universe and relations can be represented as regular languages. It follows from the standard closure properties of regular languages that the first-order theory of an automatic structure…
This note presents a method of interpreting the tree adjoining languages as the natural third step in a hierarchy that starts with the regular and the context-free languages. The central notion in this account is that of a higher-order…
We consider the problem of counting the number of answers to a first-order formula on a finite structure. We present and study an extension of first-order logic in which algorithms for this counting problem can be naturally and conveniently…
The spectrum of a first-order logic sentence is the set of natural numbers that are cardinalities of its finite models. In this paper we study the hierarchy of first-order spectra based on the number of variables. It has been conjectured…
This paper proposes an alternative to standard first-order logic that seeks greater naturalness, generality, and semantic self-containment. The system removes the first-order restriction, avoids type hierarchies, and dispenses with external…
Sets with atoms serve as an alternative to ZFC foundations for mathematics, where some infinite, though highly symmetric sets, behave in a finitistic way. Therefore, one can try to carry over analysis of the classical algorithms from finite…